


Defenseless Part II

by QuoteIntangible



Series: Defenseless Universe [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Canon-Typical Violence, Companion Piece, I fixed Kakashi's early timeline, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, References to Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2019-10-05 22:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17333672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuoteIntangible/pseuds/QuoteIntangible
Summary: "Kakashi underestimated two very important things about Gai: his willpower and his loyalty." Or the story in which some of the worst things that have ever happened to Kakashi also inadvertently lead him to the greatest thing that has ever happened to him. Companion piece to Defenseless





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: It wouldn't be me if there wasn't a lengthy Author's Note. This story is a companion piece to Defenseless, and I have been writing this story on and off for about the last four years. I question whether or not posting this is the right decision. Mainly, I think my problem with this story lies in the fact that I am not quite sure it has the flow I was looking for and I'm not quite sure that all the pieces tie in together well enough. So I am partially hoping that by posting it I will get some feedback that will help catapult this story into completion and maybe help me figure out some of the issues I am having with it. So please, don't be shy. If there is anything that seems confusing or doesn't flow well, I want to know because I want to fix it. Be kind in your criticism, though, please. I'm fragile. 
> 
> Knowing what happens in Defenseless will be important to understanding this story. If you don't want to read it, I'll tell you what happens now. Spoiler alert, Kakashi was attacked by his ANBU teammates, Buta and Jiro, and they taped the whole attack. Buta wore a pig mask, which is why he is referred to as the pig quite often in this story. 
> 
> I would also like to point out that I fixed Kakashi's timeline as Kishimoto seriously messed it up. I mean, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for Kakashi to be at the academy with Obito and Rin and be on their genin team as a genin and then be a jounin like a year or two later. It doesn't make any sense! The continuity issues with Kakashi's timeline seriously annoy me. If Kakashi was in fact 5 when he became a genin and Obito and Rin were both 10 when they became genin, then by the time Kakashi became a jounin at 12, both Rin and Obito would have been 17 and Rin's crush on Kakashi as seen in the anime would have made no sense whatsoever. So in my head to fix this, Kakashi is the same age as Rin and Obito, and he did not go to the academy with them. Kakashi was on another genin team before being placed on Minato's team with Obito and Rin. He did, however, go to the academy with Gai. Is this important to the story? Not entirely, but I do make references to it.

At first, Kakashi thought very little of Gai, literally and figuratively. Low levels of chakra, no natural talent, and average intelligence meant Gai got filtered with the rest of their class into the part of his brain that stored useless information. Gai was both loud and obnoxious, meaning he did not posses the stealth required to be a ninja and thus was likely to be killed very young. _If_ he ever made it to genin. Kakashi found the other child far too soft-hearted to become a ninja. There was no room in the shinobi world, he believed at that age, for those who hesitated to kill when asked.  

Gai remained in his periphery. He knew of and tolerated the other’s presence as a necessity, but did not seek out his companionship. Though, the same could be said about every other child in his pre-genin class. When Kakashi graduated the academy just six months after entering and joined his first genin team, Gai, though already a year older than him, remained behind another year. Kakashi expected never to hear about the other child again.

Kakashi underestimated two very important things about Gai, though: his willpower and his loyalty. Gai was willing to do anything to reach his goals, no matter how silly or ridiculous they seemed to other people, and never caved in no matter who teased him or what obstacle got in his way. And though soft-hearted Gai remained despite everything, he cherished those he cared for fiercely and would tear apart another human being with his bare hands if he had to in order to protect someone he loved.

Secretly, even at a young age, Kakashi respected Gai’s loyalty and determination. Out loud and in person, he scoffed at the other child and pushed him away. No use getting attached when Gai would eventually just die in the field.

But time after time, Gai came back. Time after time, Gai challenged him, forcing his way into Kakashi’s life unwillingly. Time after time, in those early days, Kakashi beat him over and over at every challenge.

He wonders now that he is older whether or not Gai’s insistence on invading his life had less to do with Gai wanting to challenge and defeat ‘the best’ in order to prove himself and more to do with the soft-hearted, kind, determined child knowing even at such a young age that Kakashi needed him and simply refused to give up. Because that was who Gai was and that was who he would always be.

Somehow, despite everything, Gai managed to make him fall in love completely against his will.

**

Kakashi’s eyes snapped open, a vague sense of panic, and dread, and terror parting the fog pulling him under as he struggled to remain awake. The IV in his arm and the scratchy sheets pulled up to his nose told him he was in the hospital. He had no memory of getting here. Had Buta dumped his body somewhere and Kakashi had fought the poison long enough to stumble to the hospital himself? Had Jiro regained some of the conscience he lost when he … when he attacked him and defied Buta to bring him to the hospital? Or had Buta himself brought him here believing Kakashi would die or arrogant enough to believe he would get away with it even if Kakashi survived? Had Buta really …

He shook his head. The horrible part of it all was that Buta _would_ get away with it, as the older ANBU had probably known all along. Kakashi would never tell a soul. No one would believe him anyways.

A small tendril of chakra warned him of another’s presence. It surprised him. No one ever waited for him to wake up in the hospital, not since Rin and Minato’s death. The chakra signature felt comforting, nurturing, but he berated himself for not noticing the other person sooner. He sat up steadily, not betraying the flood of adrenaline coursing through his veins or the way his heart wildly _thud_ , _thud_ , _thud_ against his ribs.

The intruder waited for him to gain his bearings. When he caught a glimpse of blonde hair and a chakra mark, he knew the charade was over.

He remembered the first time he met Tsuande. He was five years old, a recently anointed genin, listening to the talk of adults that should have interested him, but bored him beyond belief. He let his attention wander, past his father laughing unnecessarily loud at whatever inane, non-shinobi related thing Jariya had said.  She was there, the soon to be legendary sanin, with hands on her hips and shoulders hoisted high. With one punch, she leveled Jairya. From that moment, the woman who could defeat Jairya with one hand acquired his deepest respect. He knew what she was capable of, knew what a skilled healer the woman was, and knew there was no injury on his body she had not intimately touched with her own chakra.

“Kakashi,” she said in a voice too soft for the boisterous personality he remembered, “I know.”

She didn’t need to say it. They both knew this was something the greatest healer in the world had not missed, but Kakashi could pretend that he did not know. He could pretend that he didn’t see Buta’s face burning behind his eyelids. He could pretend that he couldn’t feel the ache where the pig violated him, and that it didn’t hurt as much as it did. And maybe, if he tried hard enough for long enough, he could pretend that the monster that called Gai scum, that let Obito die, that killed Rin with one fatal blow, that somehow that monster didn’t deserve this.

Kakashi was a ninja. Emotions held no power over him. Sex was just a weapon, and like every wound, this, too, he would get over.

“Know what?” he lied, his gaze falling on the infamous sanin.

She frowned, the lie obvious in the way his pulse quickened and his eyes held steady. “I know you were raped, Kakashi.”

He should have expected the bluntness from her, even with the uncharacteristic quietness. People, after all, never really change from what we remember. Still, he flinched at the word and the matter-of-fact way she said it.

“I don’t remember,” he lied, eyes shifting away from her sympathy towards the white walls of the hospital, continuous in their bland décor.

She reached out and touched his hand. His arm shivered, but remained still. He refused to flinch again.

“I don’t remember anything,” he reiterated, and maybe if he kept saying it, it would come true.

“Kakashi,” she said squeezing his hand, before letting go and leaning back in her chair. “I know,” she repeated, “and if you want to talk, I’m here for you. I’ll listen.”

His shoulders jerked. Kakashi would have called it a shrug, but a shrug was an undignified response for an elite shinobi. She may listen, but no one would ever believe him, so with a voice that was hoarse and thin, he said, “I’m fine.”

“Okay,” she said. “But you know you can come to me anytime, right?”

He nodded and she left, a silent ghost in a room full of haunted whispers. Obito’s eye openly wept, tears streaming down his cheek. His own eye was wet, but those tears he could force not to fall.

A few months later, the news that Tsunade had left the village for good trickled down to him. No one would ever have to know his secret again.

*

When he closed his eyes again he saw Buta, and when he dreamed, one cheek was pressed into the floor, a hot breath ghosting across his other cheek as a shadow with a pig face loomed over him.

When he opened his eyes, he expected the same blank hospital walls and an empty chair. But he felt an unmistakable chakra that was both annoying in the way it proudly declared its presence and comforting in the way it refused to hide.  ~~~~

“Gai,” he announced his sudden consciousness to his vistor. He kept it cool and forced his heart not to wildly beat, though Gai had not the skill to tell. There was something in his stomach that tugged at him when Gai was around, like the feeling he got when he knew there was danger but could not yet see it or when the pieces of a puzzle didn’t quite fit together. He didn’t think Gai was dangerous, but he was far more deadly than Kakashi ever gave him credit for.

“Kakashi, my eternal rival! I am glad to see you awake. Are you feeling better?” Gai sprang from his chair, the only thing keeping him from launching himself onto the hospital bed, a reminder of what happened last time he did that.

Gai’s words made that feeling in his gut tug a little harder, but he did not know what it meant. “Yes,” he responded, forcing his body to a sitting position and violently suppressing the wince that wanted to mar his face.

He expected a reply like ‘what a modern response,’ or ‘you’re so cool.’ Instead he found Gai staring at his face, pupils dilated, eyes widened, and jaw slacken, an expression he’d unwillingly come to know as lust. It made him uncomfortable, and the feeling in his gut evaporated like a shadow clone, replaced with something akin to revulsion. It was then he realized his mask was gone, face bared to the world for hungry eyes to feast upon.

“Stop,” he said in an expressionless tone that covered his disgust. He wasn’t beautiful, and he wasn’t something special to look at. He was just another face in the crowd. He hadn’t meant to tell Gai to stop, though, it just sort of tumbled out of his mouth, something so unusual for him. But Gai pretended not to notice as he blinked the look away and smiled sheepishly at him. The tug in his gut came back.

“Here, I brought you a change of clothes,” Gai said tossing one of Kakashi’s custom-made shirts towards him and a standard vest and pants. Gai had wormed his way so far into his life that he even had access to Kakashi’s apartment. He gripped the fabric tight and gazed at the mask clenched between his fingers.

He wasn’t trying to cover up some hideous blemish with his masks, nor was he trying to obscure his similarities to his father. He just wanted to hide. When you were the youngest student ever to graduate from the ninja academy, and youngest chunin ever, people looked down at you, expected success, expected you to never fail until you did. He cut out his own heart and left it with his father’s body, but he couldn’t stop feeling completely. Sometimes even the Hatake prodigy caved under pressure, but the mask never did.  The mask was always there for him to hide behind.

And Gai had seen underneath it, had thought to so casually walk into his apartment and bring him another to rebuild his defenses to the outside world, to everyone but Gai.

Suddenly Kakashi knew what that tug in his gut was, and he knew what that look on Gai’s face really was. It wasn’t lust, it was …

Damn. He always realized these things at the worst possible time.  He wasn’t ready for this.

He closed his eyes and Buta was there, but when he opened them again, there was Gai smiling softly at him, waiting by his bedside for as long as Kakashi needed him to.

He didn’t know how to handle that.

*

The look on Buta’s face when he walked into the ANBU locker room two weeks later was comical. Years of disuse and no knowledge on how to kept the laugh bubbling in his chest in check.

Kakashi kept his hand firmly on his new Captain’s tanto as he stole into the room, avoiding the heated gaze igniting his senses. It was not a good first impression for his new team, two new fresh recruits so green to the horrors of ANBU their eyes still shone with life rather than the smoldering ashes replaced in the faces of veterans like him, if their new captain flinched the second they saw him.

With ersatz confidence, he walked to his new team. He felt Buta’s eyes burning a hole into his back. Kakashi avoided him, unable to meet Buta’s gaze.

He didn’t need to look at Buta to know the older shinobi was smirking.

They both knew Buta had won.

*

Sometimes the sharingan copied things he didn’t want to know. He was 17, in the bowels of Lightning country deep undercover alone because he was the only ANBU with the right chakra nature and the right jutsu to blend in. Apparently, Lightning had a little bit of a problem with a shadow leader who ran an underground organization of ninja. Apparently, Lightning couldn’t take care of its own problems. So Konoha volunteered Kakashi’s services because it was far too invested in the country and needed a positive outcome. Much like what Danzo and Root were to Konoha, this man was to Lightning. And just like Konoha, the Kage and council didn’t know about the experiments the man was performing in the tunnels under the Kage’s office, nor did they know of his intent to stage a coup. Not until Kakashi came along and forced them to see.

He infiltrated the organization as a rogue ninja with a record forged by Lightning’s Kage as being wanted by the country. For six months, he worked himself up the chain of command while secretly feeding intel to both Lightning and Konoha.

Then he learned of the experiments.

It was the smell of burning flesh and acrid smoke that led him to it. And the screams, the terrifying screams. He found a girl no older than 18 lying in a cell, her body smoldering from little holes peppered across her skin. He thought her dead, until she turned big brown eyes that begged Kakashi to kill her towards him. He knew this girl, Moriko was the name given to her. They called her that because she created a jutsu that made chairs from mud just so she could sit in the forest and talk to the trees. Kakashi had discounted her as a threat very early on in his assignment. Briefly, he wondered how she had ended up in the shadow organization as her particular skills were not exactly handy in a fight and she would have made a terrible soldier.

Apparently, he was not the only one who thought the same.

 He reached out with his senses now, searching for her chakra signature, and felt nothing. Pulling the bandages covering his sharingan off, he still saw nothing, not one whisper of chakra anywhere in her body.

“Please,” she begged. “Please let me die.”

A kunai sped past him and buried itself in her neck. She fell with a thud, the only sign of her passing.

He whipped around, forgetting to close his eye over the sharingan, as a man he knew as Nobuo stepped from the shadows and said, “It’s better that way.”

In Kakashi’s opinion, Nobuo was a dullard, but even he did not miss the glowing red eye like embers in the night. He debated killing him to keep his cover, but the feeling deep in his gut told him this was over either way. It was time to leave. He was about to make his escape when several others appeared out of the darkness. They not so gently marched him to the shadow leader.  There he learned the horrifying truth.

Chakra absorption jutsu, or so the man called it, defined as an attempt to absorb the chakra of another into his body. The shadow leader ‘needed more power to make the world a better place, and would Kakashi not help him?’ He’d heard this speech before. It’s still bullshit.

The man conveniently left out the part where there was no ‘absorption,’ just bodies completely burned from the inside out. Just like chakra exhaustion, only this was permanent.

The shadow leader said he just needed time to make the jutsu perfect, and that all of his victims were willing subjects. Kakashi knew this too was a lie.

He never wanted to know the jutsu. But his cover was officially blown and when he refused to pledge allegiance to the organization, it was a fight to the death to get out with the information of the experiments and the planned coup. 

The shadow leader tried it on him, the cursed jutsu that haunted him and made Obito’s eye burn. The man was determined to make it work this time and absorb Kakashi’s chakra into his own body.

In took just a fraction of a second for his Sharingan to copy the move.

 He countered it and accidentally ended up reversing the technique onto the shadow leader.

The shadow leader was like a corn husk left in the fire for too long, his body covered in holes where the chakra burned out of his body, the inside turned to ash. He begged Kakashi to kill him. Instead he handed him over to Lightning’s Kage as the man screamed, begged to die and cursed his now meaningless existence.

It took weeks for the smell of burning flesh to wash off his hands.

Lightning had a new-found respect for Konoha after that, and when he got home, a new nickname preceded him. Sharingan no Kakashi, some called him, others, a terrifying monster, and in the Bingo Book his name officially went. He spent three days in front of his toilet trying to get over it, and vowed never to use the technique again. Until Buta forced him to break that promise.

Tenzou was younger than Kakashi was when Buta tried to rape him in the ANBU locker room, not yet 15 years old and still just a kid trying to adapt to his new surroundings. Buta liked to take advantage of weaknesses like that. Attacking Tenzou in the ANBU locker room seemed a rather unwise decision, but Buta had always been rather arrogant. How did the older ANBU intend to explain the sudden absence of Tenzou? Or had the man planned to completely dispose of the body and hope people assumed Tenzou ran away?

It didn’t matter what Buta’s plans were. It only mattered that Kakashi stopped him.

He was not sure how it started, and he never asked his kohai what happened before he walked in on the fight. He recognized the mix of fear and disgust on the kid’s face, though, the face of a kid who knew what would happen to him if he lost this fight against the older ninja. Buta probably told him what he planned. He was arrogant like that, stated his intentions, attacked, and believed he would always win, just like when they fought together as teammates. Usually, Buta was right.

Tenzou was holding his own pretty well, but just like Kakashi that fateful day, Tenzou did not fight as if his life depended on it, too confused about being attacked by a supposed comrade in the relative safety of the ANBU compound to really understand what was at stake. The kid, therefore, wasn’t guarded enough, wasn’t cautious enough, wasn’t fighting as fiercely as Kakashi had seen him do on the battlefield.

Kakashi knew. He knew and he would not let the same thing happen to his kohai that had happened to him. Easily, he deflected the poisoned kunai that was on a straight, unhindered path towards Tenzou’s unprotected back, and pushed the wood user behind him. 

This was his fight.

Four years ago, Buta beat him, humiliated him, degraded the tiny bit left of his innocence, and Kakashi had let him get away with it by saying nothing in the aftermath. No one would have believed him anyway. But he kept his distance, and now he wondered how many others had suffered in the last few years because of Buta and because Kakashi did nothing to stop him?

Not anymore. It was his responsibility to end this.

The fight lasted no more than a few minutes before Kakashi pinned him to the ground. He’d always been smarter and more talented than Buta, but now he was stronger and Jiro was nowhere to be found to help, having died on a mission years ago. Buta bucked and fought and bit to get free, but Tenzou’s wood justu kept him pinned as Kakashi considered his options.

He couldn’t let Buta harm another person, but he couldn’t just hand him over to authorities. People would ask questions, and the truth would claw its way free. Kakashi didn’t care much for his reputation, but he didn’t want people to know about this either. It would be his words against Buta’s, and in the end, he knew, no one would believe Kakashi, a practically worthless shinobi with too many sins against his own country on his hands over the older, seemingly respectful ANBU. There was only one option he saw to make sure Buta could never harm another human being again, and that was to use the vile jutsu he learned in Lightning to take away Buta’s ability to use chakra, to take away his power.

Buta’s screams and vile curses gave way to cries and pained gasps as Kakashi entered his lightning directly into Buta’s chakra system, burning him from the inside out and opening up a path for the chakra to leave his tormentor’s body with the lightning. Tenzou looked a little green when the smell of charred flesh invaded the locker room, but the kid held steady. Having been experiment on by Orochimaru and growing up in Root, this was far from the worst thing the kid had seen.

Someone had to have heard the cries, but no one came. He wondered how many other ANBU Buta terrorized that were turning a blind eye to his distress now.

His skin crawled where it had touched the other man’s and he scrambled away once done, resisting the urge to scrub his hands across his skin where it had touched the vile man. Buta attempted to take him out with a chakra wire, and when it would not work, he screamed, “What did you do to me?” 

“If you ever hurt another living person again, I will know and I will not be so kind next time,” Kakashi said, though mostly it was a bluff. He never wanted to see the man again.

Kakashi placed a heavy hand on Tenzou’s shoulder and led the shocked kid away, while Buta shouted for him to come back.

The next day, Buta retired, and it took something much more than Kakashi had to face him again.

Tenzou offered a reassuring look and a steady hand on Kakashi’s shoulder whenever he caught him staring at the spot he’d taken away Buta’s chakra. Tenzou knew. Either he guessed or Buta had told him what he’d done to Kakashi, he didn’t know. But Tenzou _knew_ his deepest, darkest secret, and he was the only person in all of Konoha to know. He also knew, though, what Kakashi had saved him from. So they never talked about it.

He forced Tenzou’s silent support to be enough.

A few days after the fight with Buta, a tape appeared in his apartment hidden amongst his other videos. He knew what it was, remembering more clearly than he wanted to the video camera recording every second of his assault.

He reached for the tape to destroy it, but his hand would not move, would not grab the tape. He felt his heart speed up, his breathing quick and labored until he nearly passed out. The panic clawed at his chest, leaving him shaking.

Forced to flee his own apartment, he smacked into Gai as he rounded the corner and nearly fell flat on his ass. It didn’t take a person like Gai who knew him better than anyone else to know that something was wrong, but it took a person like Gai who knew him better than anyone else not to ask why.  Gai steadied him, kept him from falling, and instead of asking the question Kakashi knew he wanted to, asked him to a challenge instead.

“I’m not really in any shape for a fight,” Kakashi said. If they dueled with fists, he would be frenzied, unfocused, and panicked, desperate to win, and both of them could no longer keep up this façade that Kakashi was okay when they both knew he wasn’t and hadn’t been for a very long time.

“I don’t mean a fight,” Gai said. He pondered for a moment, and always seeming to know what Kakashi needed, he said, “Rock, paper, scissors?”

The idea was ludicrous. Kakashi had never played rock, paper, scissors in his life. In fact, he had never played any game that wasn’t directly related to training. He found himself nodding to the suggestion out of sheer surprise, and easily beat Gai’s paper with his scissors. Gai had a tell, not that Kakashi would ever let him know.

“How do you do that?” Gai lamented after Kakashi won ten times in a row. Kakashi smirked beneath his mask, for a moment the tape long forgotten. “Okay, okay. How about if I win this one, you have to go on a date with me?”

Kakashi did not let his shock show in his posture or on his face, yet another benefit of the mask. They had been building to this moment for years, he knew, and yet it still surprised him. He felt panicked, he felt terrified, but he also felt … happy. He wanted this, had so for years, and he trusted Gai not to let it end in disaster.

He trusted Gai with more than just his life, he trusted Gai with his secrets. He wanted to believe this could work, that he didn’t have to die alone, that he was actually worth something to someone and not just a monster who killed. 

So he let Gai win. The megawatt smile and patented Gai pose was enough to make it worth it.

He turned to leave, when the memory of the tape slammed into him once more. Gai had made him forget. Gai had unknowingly, or perhaps knowingly, been an anchor keeping him steady. He couldn’t go back into his apartment alone knowing what waited for him, not yet at least. He asked Gai to come home with him, hoping just this once someone else could fight his demons for him.

For just a brief moment in time, it worked.

But he did not try to touch the tape again and he couldn’t tell Gai to destroy it for him, though he knew Gai would without questioning him why. It sat and it sat and it sat until he could almost pretend it was not there.

He had beaten Buta, taken away his power, and saved Tenzou. He had _Gai_. And yet somehow, Buta had still won.

He closed his eyes and saw a pig mask, and begged for it to just end.

*

Kakashi died on the 10th of September under an old oak tree that was rotting from the inside out. He remembered a green fungus covered the branches, and the base was mostly hollow, but he doesn’t remember much else about that day.

It was almost his 20th birthday.  Gai had promised to take him on their first date when Kakashi returned from his mision, and Kakashi pretended he wasn’t as excited about it as he really was. Then he went and died. Asuma told him, several times, that his heart stopped beating and no one thought it would start again. Gai, Kurenai said, had never been so still in his life before. He’s still deciding whether or not it was fortune or a wretched curse that a jounin level medinin happened to come to his rescue.

He acquired a rather unfortunate reputation of being one of the best shinobi in Konoha, some claiming after the loss of each sanin, he _was_ the best after Sarutobi. Those same people whispered his name in reverence, and used the word ‘next Hokage’ and his name in the same sentence. Hokage, huh? He hated the very idea. Monsters like him didn’t become the next Hokage, and he may be good, but he wasn’t irreplaceable, just like every other shinobi in this village. He was no better than anyone else. His reputation was a nuisance, nothing more, and made him a giant target for those looking to make a name, or for those looking to receive the nice fat check his head was worth.

So when he was inevitably captured, he had to convince all seven people of the criminal organization he’d stumbled upon that he was not, in fact, Sharingan no Kakashi. It took a lot out of his chakra to keep up the low level genjustu, and his sharingan burned, swirling wildly from the constant use, until a permanent pressure settled behind his eye, like someone taking bandages and pressing them against his eye adding more and more bandages to stop the bleeding, deeper and deeper in his brain. By the end, it felt just like a senbon piercing through the middle of his eye, through the matter of his brain and to the back of his skull, a spike of fire licking at his mind, and in the seven days he was held captive, it slowly burned away any coherent thought.

But he couldn’t let up the illusion. If they knew who he was, it would be but a matter of seconds before they killed him, and he had vital information he needed to return to Konoha. He could not let the sharingan fall into the wrong hands either.

Kakashi knew they could certainly kill him, but just not yet.

Convinced he was the infamous Copy-nin, the leader of the organization tried to torture his true identity out of him. 

“What is your name?” the man asked as the bite of a whip tore into back and thighs over and over again.

“Who are you?” the man asked when the pressure on his head disappeared and he was allowed a brief second to inhale before the man pushed his head under the water again.

“I know you are the infamous Copy-nin,” the man said as he beat the soles of Kakashi’s feet with a leather strap.

“You killed my big brother,” he said, as he left Kakashi out in the blazing summer sun with his arms tied above his head, shoulders straining until they popped out of place. They popped them back in and did it all over again.

The next day they broke his wrist. “I’m going to break you,” the man had said.

Kakashi thought the idea ridiculous and swallowed his laugh. He was already broken long before this man entered his life.

In the end, the man resorted to just beating him, shouting ‘who are you!’ with every strike. But he never resorted to the one thing that just might shatter Kakashi and force him to reveal his secret.

His legs shook with the effort to stand, his broken ribs pressed painfully on his lungs, and he could barely think, let alone formulate a plan. Good thing he created one the second day of his capture and was just waiting for the right moment to make it happen. On the seventh day, when they thought him too weak to fight back, he mounted an escape and won, taking out three of the enemy as he fled.

The rest of his enemy pursued. He intended to make his last stand in the forests of Konoha, amongst the familiar trees and scent of wet dirt and leaves that he associated with home. He’d never win, and he doubted Pakkun would get back in time with reinforcements. But he was close enough that someone would come eventually and the information he collected would not be wasted and the sharingan could be recovered.

Once in Konoha’s borders, he stopped trying to flee and turned to face the enemy he knew was not far behind. He leaned his weight heavily into the closest tree, wondering if they would kill him quick or make him suffer more before he died? The thought, however brief, crossed his mind that he perhaps he should kill himself with an incendiary tag, destroying all evidence of himself and the sharingan.

But he could not, would not, do that to Gai.

Elite shinobi did not feel fear, and they were never startled, but when a hand touched his shoulder, a strangled gasp forced its way past chapped lips as he spun around to meet his enemy with a swipe of his kunai. The concern on Asuma’s face instead of the death he sought crumbled his weak legs, and he crashed to the ground.

“Shit,” Asuma hissed, as he scrambled to stop Kakashi from falling face first in the dirt. “What the fuck happened to you?”

He hadn’t managed to escape with his entire uniform, just his ANBU mask, a shirt that was not his own, and his pants and sandals. The only weapons he managed to scavenge were the kunai in his hands and a few shuriken in his pocket. Blood seeped through his clothing, and dripped from his hands. The dirty cloth wrapped around his broken wrist did nothing to hide how mangled the limb was. His eyes would not open all the way, and he knew what that sound in his chest was: the death rattle, something he’d unfortunately become familiar with during the war. And he wasn’t sure anyone in the village still alive could remember the last time he was startled. Overall, he must have made for one truly frightening site.

He tried to reply, just a simple ‘yo,’ something dry and sarcastic, but most importantly, easy to say. Instead he coughed up blood all over the other jounin’s vest. 

Kurenai skidded to a halt on his other side, as what he came to realize was a medinin crashed to her knees next to him, hands already glowing with chakra. Hands pushed at his shoulders, urging him to lie down, but he pushed them away and forced himself to sit, valiantly attempting to warn the others of his pursuers, but continuing to choke on his words.

It was no surprise Asuma understood first. “How many?” he asked, and because Kakashi could not catch enough breath to speak, held up four fingers.

“Naoki, watch him,” Asuma commanded to the medinin, but Kakashi dragged himself to his feet. Asuma and Kurenai could not defeat his pursuers by themselves. It would be more deaths on his hands. But if he could just occupy one of them long enough for Asuma and Kurenai to kill at least two of his four pursuers, they stood a decent chance of winning this fight.

The onslaught came fast and fierce. He barely got the kunai up in time to block the shower of weapons from the man whose brother he killed. The advantage lay in the trees, but he needed to keep the fight on the ground in case both his chakra and strength gave out on him. It was all he could do just to block the blows and stay on his feet.

Asuma tried to stay near him, and he appreciated the effort. But in the chaos of the fight and with Kakashi’s flagging strength, he was easily separated from the group.

The kick to his unprotected chest came as no surprise. He knew he couldn’t keep the fight up for long. Broken bones crunched under a steel-toed boot, and there was a flare of agony in his ribs that whited out his vision. He gasped for air and couldn’t exhale. The muscles in his chest seized as he suffocated and fell to his knees, at the mercy of his sadistic captor. He waited for death to claim him in her warm embrace, to cradle him in her arms and carry him away from the pain. His only wish was that he had bought Asuma and Kurenai enough time. The last thing he heard was Gai calling his name, as reinforcements arrived just in time to save Asuma and Kurenai. Then, Kakashi answered death’s call.

He wasn’t sure he could call what he felt relief when he woke up in the hospital, but he would definitely call the emotion on Gai’s face relief. He’d never seen Gai cry so hard before.

Then Gai kissed him, and he shattered like his father’s blade during the war. He thought, just this once, he could accept the comfort denied his entire life. He swore this one time would be the last.

But when he closed his eyes, there were two shadows now, looming over him, holding him down, forcing him to suffer for their pleasure. The frayed edges of his psyche hung out in the world for anyone to see. One tug and the whole thing would unravel. Kakashi would shatter, the broken pieces scattered across the ground never be to put back together the same way again, if there was anything to even salvage. And Gai … maybe Gai wouldn’t be enough to help him fight these demons after all.

He held it together for almost two years, before everything came crashing down around him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for how long this took. I intended to have the whole story done the week after I posted the first chapter. Then I had a bit of a nervous breakdown (you can thank Donald Trump, Republicans, and all their dumbass supporters for that). As I was slowly recovering from my breakdown with the help of a therapist, I found out my dog had bone cancer. Just two months later, he passed away. It's been a few weeks since then, but I am absolutely devastated over his death still and I miss him every single day. He was my baby, my whole world, and I don't exactly know what to do with myself or how to cope now that he is gone. I'm just ... lost. I went from writing almost every day of my life, to writing nothing at all. It's been a long process and quite a few months at this point, but I think I have found my words again. This is the first thing I have written in a long, long time. And this story isn't over yet, not by a long shot, but I at least wanted to post something.

Five days after Kakashi thought for certain he would die alone in the forests of Konoha, Gai burst into his hospital room in a such a spectacular display that the very air seemed to glow around him and a breeze appeared out of thin air to blow his short black hair back.

“Kakashi, my esteemed friend, we are going on that date I promised you,” Gai proclaimed loudly in a deep, rich baritone as if he were performing on a stage with no microphone.

“Does the hospital staff know about this?” Kakashi asked as Gai strutted forward with a wheelchair. His arm remained splinted, still broken despite multiple rounds of healing, as were his ribs which were strapped, but radiated pain with every breath. His chakra levels remained practically non-existent, struggling to regain a foothold after the abuse his body had been put through. Just standing up remained a challenge, and walking was simply out of the question. The hospital staff frowned if he so much as sat up on his own. Not that his injuries or their disapproval of this date would stop him from going, he just wanted to know how much time they had before someone came after him.

“I have already cleared it with the appropriate staff. You do not have to worry about anything, I have taken care of it. However, you are not allowed to leave this wheelchair or I will be in trouble. So what do you say? Will you accompany me on a date?” Gai asked and held out his hand like a gentleman.

Kakashi felt a smile tug at the corners of his lips, though it was safely hidden under his mask. He gave a slight nod to indicate his assent.

Gai’s wide smile actually, almost unbelievably, glittered in response.

“Did you just use chakra to make your teeth shine like that?”

“Yes,” he proudly declared and winked. Kakashi stifled his snort of laughter. “Don’t tell anyone,” he conspiratorially whispered as a nurse walked into the room. The nurse helped Gai ease Kakashi out of the bed and into the wheelchair, leaving Kakashi shaking with the effort it took just to move that tiny bit. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Wanna see how fast I can run us there?” Gai challenged.

“Gai-san,” the nurse chided. “You know the rules. You promised to be careful with Hatake-san. He is still quite injured. That means nothing strenuous and nothing too exciting.”

Kakashi frowned in distaste at the nurse’s words. She made him sound …vulnerable, human. The two very things he could never afford to be, not since his name went into the Bingo book and he became more of a symbol of strength for their village than a human being. She was just a civilian nurse, though. She couldn’t understand. “I’ll bet you can’t make it there under 60 seconds,” he challenged Gai, even though he had no idea where _there_ was.

Gai took off like a strike of lightning, the nurse yelling curses after him. The tension eased from his shoulders as the hospital disappeared behind them.  The town blurred past them. The wind whipped through the air. The faint smell of falling leaves, of autumn, drifted from the forest, permeating the town with its distinct scent. He closed his eyes, and let the sensations ease the ache in his rapidly aging bones, trusting Gai to get them to their destination safely. He felt a hand squeeze his shoulder briefly before Gai slowed.

They stopped at a place Kakashi had become far too familiar within the last 10 years. A place that held the memories of some of his most potent demons, carved into faceless, unmoving stone.

“Why did you bring me here?” He made to stand in respect of the dead, but the hand on the shoulder pressed him gently back into the wheelchair.

“I will help you there,” Gai said, in a voice much softer than Kakashi was used to. He settled the wheelchair next to Obito’s name, 36 rows from the bottom, 64 rows from the top, 3 columns from the right, buried amongst a sea of lost soldiers.

“This is not part of the date,” Gai clarified. “I know that you have been a bit depressed that you have been unable to come here. I thought we could spend some time with our precious people before our real date.” Gai stepped away and went to find the name of his father, whom Kakashi knew the other shinobi still held many regrets over. In some ways, they were not so different from one another.

He turned to stare at Obito’s name, just starting to fade under the harsh elements, and wondered if he should be touched, or uncomfortable, about how well Gai knew him.

Even after all these years, he still did not know what drew him to the memorial stone. Repentance? Grief? Hope? Or maybe he was looking for the answer to death. Why they had to die so needlessly? Why they had to die at all?

 _Because that’s life, and life has no answers. No reasons. No purpose,_ a voice from his long-distant past answered in his mind. 

He glanced at Gai to make sure he was too far away to eavesdrop and spoke softly to his lost friend. “Obito. Sometimes I wonder if you regretted saving me. If you realized, in those final moments, that I was not worth saving. I wonder the same thing about Gai,” he paused, glancing towards the man kneeling before his father’s name on the other side of the stone. “I wonder if he gets too close, sees the monster that I've always been, that he’ll realize it’s a mistake, that _we’re_ a mistake. One day, he’ll see what I see, what I wish you had seen before you sacrificed your life for me. That I’m not worth it.”

He blinked away the tears in Obito’s eye and told Gai he was ready to leave.

-

Gai took him to a restaurant near the edges of center city, outside of the normally busy restaurants and bars. Regular civilians rarely traversed to this part of the city, but it was regularly visited by shinobi, particularly at the end of a bad mission, or a long night or bar crawl when all the other, more respectable places closed or kicked them out. It was a hole-in-the-wall kind of restaurant, questionable cleanliness, tucked away on the second floor of a rundown building with limited space. But like most holes-in-the-wall, it sold great food at reasonable prices and they could tuck themselves away in the corner without much notice.

Kakashi had visited the place a handful of times, always with Genma, usually when the older man had dragged Kakashi here to ‘have fun, socialize, and get out of that empty, depressing cupboard you call home.’ He had also dragged Genma home from here a couple of times after the jounin specialist suffered a particularly tough mission and Kakashi had been tasked, either voluntarily or by Raidou, to keep an eye on Genma. It was an odd place for Gai to choose, but not necessarily an unwelcome one.

“This is an interesting place,” Kakashi commented as Gai settled the wheelchair at the end of a booth near the back.

“Do you not like it?” Gai asked, sliding into the booth. Gai looked down at the table, and anxiously rubbed his hands together. “I just, I’ve seen you here a few times, and I thought that you would be comfortable here. If you want to go –”

“It’s perfect,” Kakashi reassured, covering Gai’s hand with his non-casted arm to stop his nervous movements.

Gai beamed at him. “What a hip and cool answer, my rival,” Gai said, returning to his usual, confident self. Kakashi rolled his eyes in good jest, and they fell into their easy companionship that Kakashi treasured.

As they waited for their food and talked about trivial things that put Kakashi at ease for the first time since being captured and tortured, a few familiar faces entered the bar.

A clearly drunk and exuberant Genma immediately spotted them and made a staggering beeline towards them, Kurenai and Asuma following more sedately behind.  

Kakashi’s shoulders stiffened, causing a stab of pain in his still broken ribs. All the aches and pains he’d easily ignored in Gai’s presence, like the throbbing in his broken wrist and the headache, decided to start a symphony in his body. Gai, who had his elbow on the table, head resting in his hand, casually slouched in Kakashi’s direction, suddenly jerked upright, knees banging on the underside of the table, as he adopted a ramrod straight position. Gai sent a glance, equally filled with worry and nervousness, towards Kakashi.

“Kakashi!” Genma cheered and then turned to glare at Gai. “You literally just died. You shouldn’t be out of the hospital yet.”

“I’m not,” Kakashi grumbled, as Genma slid into the booth opposite from Gai. He glared at the specialist jounin who was either too drunk to notice or too used to Kakashi’s moods to care. Clearly, the other man also had not noticed the wheelchair.

“It’s a special occasion,” Gai sheepishly said, rubbing the back of his head as he avoided both Kakashi and Genma’s gaze, as well as the stares they were drawing.

“Ah, your birthday, right? You guys should come join us,” Genma said, drunkenly waving a hand in the general direction of Kurenai, Asuma, and a few other shinobi that Kakashi recognized.

“I think we should leave them alone,” Kurenai delicately hedged. It was clear she knew, or at least expected, that this was a date and was subtly trying to pry Genma away without spilling their secret. Gai’s gazed darted around the group. To Kakashi’s surprise, Gai said nothing.

“Nonsense,”Genma said. “I’ll buy you guys a round for your birthday, and then you can tell me all about how you escaped the hospital early this time. I'm sure it will be almost as entertaining as the last.”

Now, Kakashi genuinely liked Genma. Next to Gai, Genma was his oldest friend. They had taken the chunin exam together when he was just six-years old. Everyone had underestimated both Kakashi’s skill and his genius, except Genma, who had treated him like an equal. Together, with their third teammate, who had complained about Kakashi the entire time, Genma and Kakashi used the assumptions about Kakashi’s age to defeat their foes and escape the exams relatively unscathed. Any other day, Kakashi would have welcomed Genma’s company. However, Kakashi did not escape death to have his first real date with Gai be interrupted. He was also not about to spend the rest of his life hiding his relationship either. If Gai couldn’t handle that …

“ _We_ are on a date,” Kakashi said, knowing Genma would not be offended. Gai gasped softly, but he couldn’t see his expression as he glared at Genma, who’s eyes widened a fraction before his face settled into a smirk. “Get lost before I tell everyone about that week in snow country where you—”

“I’m going!” Genma interrupted and stood quickly to his feet. “I can see when I’m not wanted,” Gen said, faking hurt like a pro.

“If you had seen, you would have left already.”

“You wound me. But just for the record, I totally knew you were mooning over Gai. Never knew you had a green spandex fetish, though.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kakashi rolled his eyes at Genma’s friendly teasing. “Now get lost.”

“Going, going,” Genma said, giving him a lewd smile as he slid from the booth. “I want all the juicy details, though.”

“In your dreams, Shiranui.”

“Oh, I will be dreaming about this,” Genma said with a wink. Kakashi simply shook his head as Genma finally left, years of being his friend making him immune to the other shinobi’s harmless flirtations and crude jokes.

Kakashi turned to stare defiantly at Gai who still looked shocked. Then, Gai’s face broke out into a shit-eating grin before he threw his head back and laughed. “I should have expected this kind of courage from my esteemed rival,” he said as an apology for assuming the worst of Kakashi and not standing up for them himself. In one fluid movement, Gai jumped onto the table and announced to the entire room that they were on a date and to leave them alone. Gai might have also thrown in the fact that Kakashi was his and his alone. Possessive? Certainly, but Kakashi was not about to argue that fact.

No one bothered them for the rest of their very pleasant stay.

-

“Are we heading back to the hospital?” Kakashi asked after they left the restaurant. He refused to admit he deflated a bit at the prospect of returning to the hospital where he would undoubtedly be forced-fed meds only to spend the rest of the night staring at the empty room until he passed out.

“Not quite yet,” Gai said.

They ended up on top of the cliff to the far east of the Hokage monument, just outside of the line of sight of the village. Gai pushed his wheelchair to a large black volcanic rock, nearly as tall as Gai, wedged between two boulders to keep the rock standing. A hole, jagged and cracked around the edges, nearly went through the rock in the middle.

“My father found this rock and brought it up here,” Gai reverently whispered, resting a hand on the rock. “Every day, he would punch this rock as hard as he could, cracking it just a little bit, more and more, creating this hole with just his fist to try and get to the other side. One day, he brought me up here to show me how far he had gotten. He taught me that day that if I just trained harder than everyone, and kept pushing, and kept trying, I could be a great shinobi no matter what anyone believed. He told me that this rock was proof of what hard work could do. He had me punch the rock for the first time that day.

“Then the war came, and he was told he couldn’t do missions outside of the village anymore. I was … I was so disappointed in him, and I, I told him that. He stopped coming here then. I regret, more than anything, saying those words to him. After his death, I decided to start where he left off, but … I haven’t been able to bring myself to make the final punch. Will you be here with me as I do it now?”

Kakashi nodded minutely, and watched as Gai opened the gates, an aura of power and strength engulfing his body. With a primal yell of rage, and one final punch, the volcanic rock shattered into thousands of pieces that scattered across the cliff.

Kakashi threw his arm up to protect his face from the shrapnel. When he lowered his arm, Gai stood in the center of the carnage, hands balled into fists, chest heaving and the gates closed.

“I did it,” he quietly said. “For you father.” Gai grabbed the largest piece of shrapnel, rough and jagged around the cracked edges, and kneeled before Kakashi’s wheelchair. He pressed the rock into Kakashi’s hand and curled both his hand’s around Kakashi’s. “Please keep this with you.”

Kakashi understood. Gai had given a piece of himself to Kakashi, and he did not mean the rock. “Always,” he promised, and pressed his lips chastely against Gai’s through the mask.

Gai helped him from the chair and they sat on the edge of the cliff, watching the sun set. Their shoulders leaned against each other’s, hands loosely clasped.

After a long, comfortable silence, his breath hitched. He looked away from Gai and the setting sun, towards the village just off in the distance. Gai had given him a very important part of his past, of his heart and soul, to Kakashi, and ... he wanted to do the same. He wanted Gai to know he was in this just as much as the other man, and that he had no intentions of leaving at any time. “On this last mission, when I reached the forests of Konoha, I thought I was going to die,” he quietly admitted. “ANBU protocol states that if death is certain, I should have … disposed of myself before the enemy could get their hands on me.”

“But you didn’t,” Gai’s voice was uncharacteristically soft.

“I didn’t,” Kakashi agreed, turning to look Gai in the eyes. “I kept fighting … for you.”

They both knew exactly what Kakashi had just done for Gai, what he had given him.

A hand snaked around his waist. “Good,” Gai whispered, and rested his head on Kakashi’s shoulders.

The sun sunk below the tree line. Together, the two figures huddled on the edge of the cliff, basking in the glow of the rising moon and twinkling stars, comfortable in only each other’s presence.

-

“What did I tell you, Gai-sensei?” a very irate medinin berated Gai just outside of his hospital room. “You were supposed to have Kakashi-san back hours ago. I almost called ANBU on you.”

A nurse helped Kakashi ease back into the hospital bed. He almost, almost welcomed the IV she jabbed into his arm, sure to be chock full of pain meds and probably a sedative that would make him feel jittery and out-of-control until exhaustion caused him to pass out. Despite the fact that every inch of his body throbbed in pain in time with the beat of his heart, and his headache had become a full-blown migraine once more, the sharingan burning intensely, Kakashi did not regret a single moment of their date.

As Gai turned to wink at him despite the tongue-lashing from the irate doctor, Kakashi knew Gai regretted nothing either.

-

 The summons from the Hokage came the day after they released him from the hospital. He swallowed the lump in his throat the summons created and shamelessly agreed to Gai’s offer to come with him. Kakashi knew he would most likely need the support.

The moment Kakashi agreed to Gai’s off-handed offer, Gai had to have to known something was wrong. But he did not ask, and Kakashi did not offer any answers as they walked through the streets to the Hokage’s office. Gai could not understand. ANBU lived, breathed, and died by a different set of rules than the rest of Konoha’s shinobi. They did things no one else dared to, saw things no one else wanted to, and lived with secrets most shinobi could not handle the responsibility of. Thus the mandatory rule that if death was imminent in enemy territory, an ANBU must eliminate themselves and any evidence of their existence.

True, Kakashi had been in Konoha when he thought death imminent and not in enemy territory, but he had been surrounded by the enemy and, as far as he knew at the time, help was too far away to be of any use. Therefore, it still counted as enemy territory. He knew the situation, and yet he had purposefully broken that one very important rule, risked having not only his eye, but his secrets fall into enemy hands …All for Gai. 

At best, he would be stripped of his ANBU command. At worst, he suspected he might be demoted. Neither option seemed optimal. He only hoped the Hokage would not tell anyone why.

“I’ll wait out here,” Gai said when the Hokage called him into the office.

Kakashi put his hound mask on as he walked in and stood stiffly before the Hokage, hands balled into fists and clasped behind his back. “Hokage-sama,” he said, bowing his head slightly in greeting.

“Kakashi. You know why I have called you in here?” the Hokage said without pretense.

“I do.”

“Then you know it’s ANBU policy to eliminate all evidence when death is imminent.”

“I do,” Kakashi replied. He wasn’t going to lie and pretend. He knew what he was doing at the time and he was willing to take full responsibility now.

“And yet you didn’t.”

“I did not,” Kakashi agreed, his eyes flicking briefly towards the proudly pulsing chakra signature of Gai. Even through the door, it brought him comfort.

“I am … relieved,” Sarutobi said, leaning back in his chair with a pleased smirk on his face. “I am glad to know you have found someone you are willing to fight to come home to."

The hound mask hid any surprise that may have flitted briefly across his face. “Y-yes, Hokage-sama,” he said, uncertain as to what to say in this situation. Out of the all the situations he had mentally prepared for, this one had never even skirted the edges of his mind.

“Besides, it’s a silly and antiquated rule that the council insists upon. I certainly would not fault anyone for not following it,” the Hokage said, waving his hand dismissively. “The reason I called you here is this.” The Hokage held up an S-class mission folder. Kakashi hesitated for a moment before stepping forward to grab it. He skimmed the important details.

“I hate to send you out so soon after getting out of the hospital, but I really need your team on this. Do you believe your team is ready and capable to hand this mission?”

“We are,” Kakashi said, closing the file. 

“Good. You are dismissed.”

Kakashi bowed lightly and walked a little faster than usual out the door sans his usual slouch. He was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, nor was he going to stick around to see if the Hokage changed his mind.

“How’d it go?” Gai asked, falling in step with Kakashi. He had not known  _why_ Kakashi had been so nervous to see the Hokage, but he had known that Kakashi was nervous and that was enough.

“I think the Hokage just gave us his blessing of our relationship,” Kakashi said, removing the Hound mask and clipping it to his belt.  

“And why would he not. Two of Konoha’s finest enthralled in the throes of passion and the springtime of youth! It is not a beautiful thing? Better than any book or movie! Nothing can keep our love from blossoming like the rarest flower in a forest!”

Comforted by Gai’s presence and reassurances, Kakashi leaned his shoulder into Gai’s as they walked. Though his armor must have been digging into Gai’s shoulder, the other shinobi did not complain.

“I know. No matter what the Hokage said, I would have decided to keep seeing you, too.”


End file.
